The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know

Okay, first off, I did purchase the book, however, I'd already read most of it beforehand because much of the book is on his blog (available for free of course, something Shawn Coyne mentions in the preface). The physical book is amazingly well done and huge, it's well worth the price (and I'm a huge Kindle fan, but some things need to be written in and marked up and highlighted).

So, why do you need this if you're a writer or trying to be one?

Shawn teaches a way of understanding good story form and function from an editors perspective, and he does it very well. By the time you've re-read something (and if you're smart, gone to his blog and read through the comments/questions and follow up) you'll have a deeper understanding of WHY good writing works. And by good writing, I'm talking about good story, commercial and popular fiction. Genre fiction. Stuff that sells.

I've been studying this story grid stuff for months now, and while I'm still a beginner, I can say, I've not only learned a lot, I've learned what it is I need to learn. What I didn't know I didn't know is now becoming apparent to me.

Okay, so let's say you haven't yet become a writer. Well, you might need this book first (or at least in conjunction with The Story Grid): Story Engineering as in this book, Brooks explains how to outline BEFORE you start writing.

Shawn's book here explains how to take that rough draft and figure out what's wrong and what's right. "Working/not working" is an important thing to know.

You need to be able to answer: "Do I have the proper conventions and devices in this story to fit into the genre I'm trying to write for?" And you need to be able to answer questions about scenes turning properly (having a purpose) and many other things (problems/mistakes) that aren't always apparent and that this "story grid" model is designed to help you find and fix.

This book helps a TON with figuring all that out.

While it's not exactly a "planning" book, I still suggest using it for that. Case in point: for me, I'd started a lot of stories before, without good planning and without understanding exactly what I needed to do. I did read the book I mentioned above (actually 3 times) but I was still stuck. I got into this material and in a three week period I cranked out a eighty thousand word rough draft. I felt like I'd climbed Mount Everest. To be fair, I give a lot of credit to other writers and books like this: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles so I'm not saying Shawn Coyne is a magical fairy, BUT I am saying he explains things in such a way that you "get it", and I "got it". Getting it allows you to be creative. I can't emphasize that enough. This book is not about some formula that will make you a creative genius, this book is an explanation on how to take your genius and funnel and channel it properly into a book people will enjoy, read and buy and recommend to others.

Okay, so what next? I finished my rough draft and then went to work on it trying to figure out how to edit (and just for the record, this is NOT a primer on line editing). Editing is very very hard. I mean, it's the real deal. I could crank out a full length novel in rough draft every two weeks if I didn't have to worry about editing, oh and my day job.

Editing is tough, and mysterious and crazy and hard. Did I mention editing is hard?

If you want to write a book people want to read (and buy) then you have to edit well. And, again, I don't mean that you use proper English grammar and not overuse semicolons. I mean that you have to have a good story structure that follows the genre requirements and conventions (or breaks the rules that you understand and because you have mastered them, etc.).

I'm far from being good at this. I've tried to "story grid" my rough draft and it's hard. It's hard to know if you are seeing it "correctly" and it's not always objective either, it's a subjective art.

But I feel like I've received a college education from working through this material and I highly recommend it.

I think you'll feel the same.

Again, I did buy this, I do review a lot and get free stuff, but this is the real deal and I'm not writing this for any other reason than it's a great book and very, extremely in fact, helpful.

If you're a serious writer or want to be one, there is no excuse not to add this book to your library.

Although the book is well written and could probably help me, the graphics were too small to see. While I could read the Foolscap and the Spreadsheet from visiting the author's website (not in the kindle reader or kindle cloud), I could not read the example grid. The grid cannot be enlarged in Kindle nor in the Kindle Cloud, nor did it appear on the author's website in PDF or other readable format so that I could SEE what he wrote. That's very frustrating. So, while the information is good, unless the author posts the grid where I can access it, then that part of the book is useless to me.

Just this past winter, I asked a top NY editor for titles of the editing books she used while learning her craft. She said she had none, that she learned through apprenticeship and on the job experience. As a writer who was desperate to "figure" out the editing component, her answer could not have been more disheartening. Then, I found The Story Grid and finally had the process to understand how to helpfully critique my writing buddies' work as well as my own.

By the time I had finished The Story Grid, I had recommended it to twelve people. I have no doubt I will continue to recommend it for years to come.

I'm so glad that I purchased the actual book and not just the Kindle edition. I've been a big fan of the author's website and now I can study the story grid for a multitude of novels. Every once in while a writing instructor comes along with something so demonstrative that the lightbulb has to go off. This book has opened my eyes to so many phrases about storytelling structure that were just phrases before. Now they seem real to me and I finally understand so many concepts for the first time. I recommend this book for any writer. The author puts so much time and effort into breaking a story down into every little beat and explaining exactly what should occur and when it should happen. I learn best by example and this book is the best example of the storytelling process, structure and reasoning behind it, that I've come across. I'm also a huge fan of Larry Brooks and his books on story structure. This book takes what I learned from Larry's books and blog and presents it in such a way that the "WHY" finally makes sense to me. This book has shown me so many things that are wrong with my manuscript, but I don't feel like I've reached a roadblock or a setback. Instead I feel empowered, knowing that I finally understand why my story wasn't working and what I need to do to fix it. This book is so worth the price and I recommend the actual book over the Kindle edition. And what a bonus that he uses my all time favorite, Silence of the Lambs for instruction.